


Where The Mist Grows Heavy//

by zfic



Series: if i could pick a day ~ an ichiruki series// [1]
Category: Bleach
Genre: Angst, Drabble, F/M, has like a paragraph of tame smut, if you could even call it that, its lazy and sloppy but i have feelings and need to share it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-04
Updated: 2018-05-04
Packaged: 2019-05-02 06:18:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14538513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zfic/pseuds/zfic
Summary: She went to the wedding because, despite everything, she was his best friend.





	Where The Mist Grows Heavy//

**Author's Note:**

> check it out on my tumblr (zfic.tumblr.com)  
> self indulgent, it's not the best fic in the world but i miss them a whole lot

She went to the wedding because, despite everything, she was his best friend.

She went because he went to hers when the first of the April showers parted the heavens, and he had the strength to look her in the eye and tell her in exactly zero words that yes, he still loved her.

She went because she would tell him the same thing. Chin up, head on.

The evening her engagement was fixed, and by all accounts she shouldn’t have, she called him.

Meet me in the park.

It’s just gone midnight, come over.

I can’t. The park, Ichigo.

Static.

Fine.

The mist was overpowering, and Rukia could have blamed the suffocating sensation creeping up her throat on the heaviness of the low clouds, but she knew better.

Hands resting clasped in her lap, she had only been waiting for three minutes on the park bench, which meant he ran here, to her.

His sneakers, battered and scuffed, stepped into her lowered line of sight. And when she looked up into his scowl, she shook her head, her bangs tickling her temples.

“Come home.” Ichigo said, his voice rough.

“A date’s fixed.” She replied.

“Come home.” He said again, inching closer.

“They grew impatient. With me, with us.” Her hands clenched around each other, “They’ve had enough.”

She was conscious of the tension between them, one that all but screamed just fucking touch me you’ve done it a thousand and one times before what makes now any different?

But when a hand reached out to cup her jaw, she found herself forcing her to let him. It wasn’t until she turned her cheek into his palm, pressing the corner of her lip to the callous at the base of his thumb, that she stopped bothering to control her breathing. 

She was well past controlling herself around him, anyway.

“Who?” He rasped.

She shook her head again.

“Rukia.” Her chest contracted as the roll of his tongue caressed the syllables of her name, “Who is it?”

“Renji, gods. Renji.” She tore her hands apart and clutched the bench on either side of her, “Next month.”

There was, Rukia found, very little she needed to say anymore. Very little indeed. She couldn’t find the motivation to tell him that Renji said he wanted nothing to do with marriage, either. She knew better, of course, but his saving face for her wasn’t overlooked.

“Are you… Do you…” He trailed off, his hand still holding her face with the kind of gentleness they only knew from each other. Charged, meaningful.

And, of course, she knew exactly what he was trying to ask her, “No.”

She also knew that the pull on her hair, the intensity of his brown eyes on her, the hint of his sneer in his top lip meant he wanted to say good, good, you love me.

With the tug on his wrist, a fist in his shirt, the tremble of her arms, she said not him. You.

Then Ichigo’s mouth was on hers and he lifted her and set her down again, on him, on the bench, in the middle of the park in the middle of the night and she didn’t care.

They fought and they fought and they fought for Sereitei, for the whole fucking world, and it was still too much to say yes, yes you may marry a human.

But why should she need permission?

Simce when did either of them need permission at all?

She gasped and shifted the hem of her dress for him. They fitted so well, their bodies were so familiar to each other, so right.

Sweat beaded at the crown of her head and her knees chafed against the damp wood of the bench on either side of him. Her fingers dug into Ichigo’s shoulders, and she kissed him and kissed him and kissed him. 

When they finished, panting against each other, he remained inside her, anchored against her. They figured out long ago that their bodies, their very biologies, were starkly different. She couldn’t have children with him, and the bittersweet aftertaste of it all wasn’t lost on her.

But she went to his wedding, anyway.

Because he went to hers.

Because no matter how much they fought, ripping through every barrier that they came up against, apparently, terribly, it wasn’t enough.

You don’t get to change the rules. You protected Sereitei, and we are grateful. But this affects nothing. War heroes do not alter what has always been. Especially in matters that do not concern them.

What concerned her, however, was producing an heir for the Kuchiki family. An heir that, until Ichigo naturally passed away (the thought, even if, in essence, it would allow them to marry, made her sick to her core), she could not produce.

Byakuya is a lost case. She was told. There is no motivating him to take another wife. It falls as your duty now.

Duty.

Above anything else, duty.

She smiled ruefully to herself as she thought of that old drive; doing what she had to do for the greater good, for the will of the elders, set in the rigid mould of what simply is and what shall always be.

They couldn’t even elope. Once the families and the courts and Sereitei itself decided the situation of her engagement, her duty was binding and anything less would bring shame upon her and her family. 

You can’t let that happen again.

The elders said, as if she planned on being used and imprisoned.

Ichigo looked so sad. 

Up at the altar, dressed in his groom’s robes, a picture of youth. Lost youth. On his wedding day. Sad.

It wasn’t her.

Up at the altar, dressed in her bridal robes, a picture of happiness. Of happiness conquered and totally, unquestionably hers. On her wedding day. To him.

And when he looked back at her, from the corner of his eye, when he looked back at her her tears ran free.

Because she saw the rain.


End file.
